Ice
by KT the Shimmer Skank
Summary: In the aftermath of Rick Murray’s death, three students struggle to cope. Turning to each other for comfort, their suffering sends them into a dangerous spiral of drug abuse. Complete.
1. all the pain I felt is

**Ice**

or, _How to Ruin Your Life in Seven Months_

-o-o-o-

Rating: The first three chapters are T, and the rest of the story will be rated M, for strong language, violence, explicit drug use, and sexual content.

Timeline: Takes place in season four, after "Eye of the Tiger."

Author's Notes: I've been working on this one for about two years, I think. Another season four AU, I know, I'm sort of hung up on that season. It was definitely Degrassi's peak. The opening is brief, but it picks up, rest assured. Should you take the time to read this, I do so long for your reviews. Many thanks.

-o-o-o-

Maybe it sounds disingenuous or cheap, but I can honestly say that all I ever really wanted was **Emma.** From the moment I saw her, I loved her. I loved her even though it hurt. I loved her even though she grew more beautiful every year, and I stayed the same old nerd. I loved her even though I knew I would never have her. I was always waiting, patient and pathetic, in the shadow of her glimmering light. Waiting to be her study partner, her shoulder to cry on, the sponge to soak up her petty whining. Her nerd in shining armor.

I just thought… well, I don't know what I thought. Every thing I did and believed after Rick died was a huge mistake. A downward spiral. We were tangled in web of lust and **oblivion**, a train headed towards a brick wall at a hundred miles per hour. After awhile I forgot what even started it all, I was so lost and fucked up.

But it was Emma. It always comes back to Emma. Getting into this game was another one of my lame-brain schemes to get closer to her. I'm not trying to blame her. I only blame myself. But for whatever reason… it still always comes back to Emma.

So I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I just wanted to _stop_ thinking. I guess that's what we all wanted. To feel anything but what we were feeling. To be free from the burden we bore.

And at what cost? What fucking cost? **Three lives ruined**, countless others scarred by the mess we made. I sit here now and I try to put it all together. I try to understand where I went so terribly wrong. When did I become a monster? When did I become a drug addict? All I ever wanted was to be Rick's **friend**. To be Emma's favorite. To be a normal guy.

I never wanted this. But I guess no one ever wants it. No matter what you hear in health class, people never think it will happen to _them. _They are fools. They are drawn, like moths to flames, to the shining and deceptive gloss of ice.


	2. take my life

Rick may as well have shot me, because every second of every day after the shooting, I felt like a ghost. I watched someone _die._ Someone who had reached out to me for help. For friendship. And what had I done? I threw a big fuck-you right in his face. Then I watched him die.

The despair in his face, the broken heart in his eyes that I saw as he stared across the barrel of the gun pointed right at my skull… I couldn't believe what I'd done to him. I really thought I was going to die, in that ice cold moment of terror. And then my heart sank when I realized, **maybe I deserved to die**.

It was all my fault. I started it. I lit the fire of senseless hate that burned Degrassi to the ground. The orange ribbons. The campaign. All my fucking shallow, pathetic attempts to win Paige over. Honestly, what had I become?

I didn't even know him. Rick had nothing to do with me, and I ruined his life just to elevate my own status. I made him a villain just so I could be a hero. Before my ribbons, most people didn't even know who Rick was. If it weren't for my campaign, maybe the bullying never would have started. Maybe Rick really could have had a chance to make amends and start over. We'll never know. I was a snobby bitch and I crushed him before he ever had a chance.

Everyone pitied me. A carpet of egg shells followed me everywhere I went. Their eyes on me made me sick. Their whispers. **Poor Emma**. The shooting fucked her up so badly she sucked Jay Hogart's cock. Doesn't get much lower than that. No one knew what I knew. No one blamed me. I was innocent Emma Nelson to them. A victim. A social martyr.

No, it was Spinner that they blamed. He was an easy target. Paint and feathers. Framing Jimmy. No one felt sorry for Spinner. And in the aftermath of a tragedy, you need someone to blame. When something bad happens, you need a bad guy, and since Rick was dead, Spinner was fair game.

I would watch him sometimes, as I sat in the back booth of the Dot sipping coffee by myself. His face was **dead** and lost as he carried plates to tables, took money from hands and placed it in the cash register. He was a social exile. Teased and ridiculed just like Rick used to be. Poetic justice. I remember wondering, more than once, if Spinner also wished he'd died.

In a sick way, I sometimes envied him. I wanted to know what it felt like to be abandoned. To be hated. To be all alone. I felt like I deserved it. It seemed like a more honest existence. Because while Spinner may have pulled the metaphorical trigger, what no one ever talks about is how I loaded and cocked the gun.


	3. drink me dry

For me, drugs were the only answer. People might say that's pathetic or naïve, but fuck off. You have no idea what it was like to be me after people found out what I did to Jimmy. I had nothing and no one. I had almost **killed** my best friend. I couldn't even imagine what he felt, paralyzed for life. He had been robbed of his whole life without even dying.

Some stupid crap stunt of mine, some asshole Spinner-prank, some bull shit childish blame-game… I was always a fucking idiot, and this time my antics had destroyed lives. This was bigger than making Mrs. Kwan cry or stealing an MP3 player. This time, I was a life-ruiner. I was unforgivable.

So what the fuck would _you_ do? What would you do if everyone you ever cared about turned their back on you? Couldn't even look you in the eye? What if the only person who called himself your friend was Jay fucking Hogart? You'd do a lot of drugs, that's what. If you were kicked out of school, with nothing to do with your free time but think about how you'd lost everything, you'd get fucked up. All. The. Time.

I was drunk at work that day, as I often was, and she was there again, as she often was. Alone, surrounded by books that I rarely saw her open. She never said much, just blushed slightly each time I refilled her coffee mug. I knew she was watching me, but I didn't know why. Most people tried not to look at me. Most people didn't want to be anywhere near me.

And on that day she surprised me, because she followed me. I went out to the back steps behind the Dot for my break, smoking a cigarette and nursing a flask of Jack. She crept up from around the corner, slinking cautiously down the alley. She walked carefully, her thin legs taking each step like it was bringing her closer to a monster who might bite. But with that look in her eyes, I kind of got the feeling she** wanted to be bitten.**

I had no idea what to say to her as she stood in front of me, chewing on her lip and staring at me with an empty face. I stared back.

"Can I have some of that?" she asked, pointing towards my flask.

I looked up at her, tracing her bare legs and thin frame with my eyes until they met her face. It was her alright. The same Emma Nelson. But really, how could this be **Emma?**

"Get your own," I responded.

She folded her arms and rolled her eyes. "Easier said than done. I don't exactly have any nineteen-year-old friends."

I shrugged as I chugged, waiting for her presence to suddenly make sense to me. But it never did. We sat together in silence. I could hear dishes clanking inside the kitchen as they were washed. Cars driving past in front of the building. Noises distant from us in our lonely moment in the alley. The wind slapped stray blonde locks against her pouting face. She tugged uncomfortably at the short green skirt that kept riding up.

What did she want from me? I didn't know then and I don't think I ever will.

"I'm sorry you got suspended," she said, circling her toe in the dirt and gravel of the alley.

In retrospect, I realize she was probably trying to be nice, but at that point in my despair, it only sounded like a sick joke. I'm sorry you had to watch Rick die, I wanted to tell her. But I didn't. I only threw back another fiery gulp of whiskey and stared at the ground. At her clean white sneakers.

"Whatever," I said.

With a deep breath, the awkward quiet finally drove her to start walking away, her fingers clasped together. She was the only person besides Jay who'd been nice to me since the shooting, and I was just letting her leave.

"Wait, Emma," I said. Her name felt strange on my tongue. I barely knew her outside of English class. She turned around and looked at me. "I can get you alcohol, if you want. You can come to this party with me on Friday."

She paused for a moment. I felt like a little bit of color was returning to her ghost-like face. "Sure," she answered.

And then she left me, with my whiskey and my loneliness.


	4. swallow me

The air was crisp, the skies were blue, and I watched as patches of sunlight danced across Emma's face. I could still smell things then. Colors were simple and **real**. Life didn't feel plastic and muted, crackled and distorted. I miss those things now.

We were walking home together, just Emma and me. One of those special evenings where Manny was at Spirit Squad practice, and I had Emma all to myself.

I knew it was only because of Manny's recent dating history that Emma was sharing this particular piece of news with me instead of with her best friend. She usually kept her girl-secrets hidden from me. On that day, I didn't know whether to be grateful or sorry that I had the fortune to hear about her Friday night plans.

"You're going on a date with Spinner?" I struggled to choke out.

"It's not a date, Toby," Emma responded, clutching her school books and keeping her eyes placed strategically forward. "He just invited me to this party."

"You're going _on a date_ with Spinner?" I was still in disbelief. "The notorious Neanderthal bully Spinner? The one pulled who pulled the feathers prank Spinner?"

Emma's voice never faltered from its steadiness. I couldn't reach her if I tried. "How many Spinners do you think there are at our school?"

I ignored all together the fact that Spinner didn't even go to our school any more. There was only one, and my feelings for him had never been particularly favorable. After the Whack Your Brain incident, I positively loathed him. If it weren't for him, Jimmy might be walking. Rick might still be alive. Emma might resemble the girl she once was.

It made me sick inside. Why, Emma? Why did Emma always go for the machismo scumbags? How could she always pass me over, when I would treat her better than anyone else, and pick the biggest assholes out of the crowd?

"I just don't see how you could actually speak to him, let alone date him."

"It's not a _date._ Look, if I bring you with me, will you believe me? It's just a party."

I was conflicted, but ultimately my love for Emma was greater than my hate for Spinner. It always came back to Emma. I consented to go, if for no other reason than this was the first time Emma had ever invited me out on a Friday night.

…

I should not have been surprised that the party was at the **ravine**. It was a dark kind of irony, morbidly poetic. This used to be a place where Emma picked up trash. Now it was a place where trash tried to pick up Emma.

I watched in disgust as she drank beer and laughed at Spinner's jokes, cozy in his lap. He murmured things into her ear that made her smile like I had never made her smile, and it was nauseating.

As we sat around the fire, I could see I wasn't the only one who was jealous. Jay and other skeeves looked on, horny craving in their eyes, while Emma got drunker and snuggled closer to Spinner throughout the night.

When the mirror and cocaine came out, I almost threw up. I was so livid and terrified at that point that I just had to walk away. I couldn't be around it. I just couldn't. I didn't want to know whether or not Emma would join in. I couldn't let my image of her be tainted any more.

As I skulked away, hands in my pockets, a mumbling drunk girl collided with me.

"Hey sexy," she said, as the beer sloshed over the sides of her red cup. She used my shoulder to prop herself up. Her name was Amy, and I only recognized her because Sean had dated her briefly. And because she was an infamous, gi-normous skank. "Can I borrow ten dollars?" She started twisting her fingers through my hair, grinning stupidly, breathing the stale scent of beer into my face.

"Um, why?" I asked, foolishly, when I should have just said no outright. Whatever she needed ten dollars for, why the hell should I care?

"I wanna get some stuff, and I'm short ten dollars." I found myself clawing her off me as she drunkenly wrapped her fingers around my neck. I think she thought she was flirting, but she was so drunk she was more like a rag doll. She opened her mouth and I could feel her soft giggle against my ear. "If you give me ten dollars, I'll make it worth your while."

She put her drunk mouth on mine, and pulled away with a smile. She tried to wink but it looked more like a seizure.

A girl had never promised to make anything worth my while. Just making _eye contact_ with girls was usually never worth my while. I always seemed to be on the losing end.

"Fine, whatever," I mumbled. I reached into my pocket and handed her a crumpled bill.

With a jubilant smile she wrapped her arm around me. She led me through the party, through the winding debauchery of the ravine. She bought drugs with the money I gave her and I watched her do them. I watch her cut the meth and suck it up through her nose. Her nostrils were pink and her eyes were bright.

Amy was high. "Come here, big boy," she said. She smiled at me, laughed at me, and led me into the van. _The _van_._ Gallons of sweat began to collect on my forehead as she essentially ripped my pants off. I was shaking, and it was embarrassing, and I think she liked that.

But soon I didn't care how embarrassed I was. I didn't care that Amy was disgusting; that I was horrified by all the drugs; that I was angry at Emma for choosing Spinner over me; that my moral compass was spinning in circles and that I kind of wanted to throw up.

I didn't care, because I had never felt lips against my dick before. This was ten times closer to sex than I'd ever been before. Ten times more aroused than I'd ever been before, watching her face writhe around my crotch, sucking it deeper into her mouth, moaning, teasing the head with her tongue. Suck, suck, lick, tease, suck… no more than two minutes and I got off.

I was panting. I wiped the sweat from my forehead. Amy spat out the cum and wiped the corners of her lips, calm as a breeze. Just another day at the office for her.

I gave her money for drugs, she gave me a blow job, and that was my inauguration into the world of the ravine.


	5. all of me

I was utterly, lustfully, **morbidly** drawn to him. I couldn't explain why. He was broken. I was enticed. The same way I'd been titillated by the escapism of something so daring and taboo as winning bracelets for sucking cock, I was seduced by the feeling of disaster that surrounded Spinner Mason. I wanted to step into his fallen world. To wade in his delicious misery.

I finally couldn't stand it any more. For days I'd been waiting, watching, deepening my obsession and fascination. I followed him out back that day. That day changed everything. I didn't know what I expected to find in the alleyway, but I knew that I wanted it. He asked me out that day, and I followed that first innocent invitation all the way to rock bottom.

And because, underneath it all, I am a huge bitch, I took Toby with me. I brought Toby to that party because he was my security blanket, the stooge who would stand beside me no matter how ridiculous I was acting. Toby had been in love with me since seventh grade. I knew it, I used it, and there's no excuse for it. I knew it was wrong, but he made it so **easy**.

In those days, those dark days haunted by Rick's ghost, I needed Toby more than ever. I couldn't stand to be alone with the nightmares. Only Toby understood, because only Toby had seen it, too. It all comes back to **Toby**, in the end.

I never should have brought him. Maybe what happened to Toby is **my fault**. It all started at that party in the ravine.

I was nervous and shy, and that made it easy to pour down the drinks that Spinner kept giving me. It was easy to lose count. It was easy to get lost in a wasted blur, to think Spinner's jokes were actually funny and that he was actually kind of cute. It was easy to ignore Toby, who sat like a sullen log and glared at me the whole time. It was easy not to notice when he walked away.

_Everything_ felt easy. The easy life. I remember thinking I wanted to feel that way forever. Easy. I had never really been drunk before. The euphoria was exquisite, the poison in my blood dizzying my reality and melting my senses. It was practically the first time I'd laughed since the shooting. Who knew it was so **easy** to feel happy again?

Spinner whispered little sillies against my ear. They tickled and I giggled. His lips so close to my skin made me think of kissing, and the thought of kissing made my body tingle.

"Yo, Spin, my man. Our friend Tall Shorty hooked us up with some real sweet candy," announced Jay, pulling up a chair beside the one where I sat on Spinner's lap.

I watched, drunk and fascinated, as Jay procured a small rectangular mirror. He retrieved a tiny plastic bag from his pocket, a harmless-looking pouch of snow white dust, and emptied it onto the mirror. His movements were calculated and cautious. I'd never seen Jay treat anything so delicately before. He treated that powder like a **queen**.

With the mirror carefully perched on his lap, Jay used his driver's license to cut the powder into six neat, equally proportioned lines. Who knew Jay was so good at math?

It was cocaine. Drugs. Images I thought I would never see up close. To me, coke only existed in television shows and health textbooks. In that surreal moment, I didn't have the cognition to be concerned. I could only be amused. After all, I was drunk and I felt invincible.

It came so naturally. I barely paused to blink as I took the mirror that was passed to me. Fearlessly I snorted the sparkling powder through the ten-dollar bill. It was that simple. I was in it, now. I was in it.

My face went numb but my mind was alive. I felt like I could do anything, like I could run to the edge of Lake Superior and back. Like light was pouring from my finger tips. Reality was barely a glimmer in the periphery. There was nothing to stop me, nothing could touch me.

I felt **bulletproof.**

I was powerful and confident, an elegant empress. Even though in reality I was drunk and sloppy and sniffling like crazy. That's the thing about the easy life. You feel beautiful even when you look like shit.

I laughed and I laughed and we laughed and we laughed. The dancing flames of the fire were spinning and leaving streaks in the air. I could barely see or feel my body. My thoughts were moving so fast I couldn't keep up with them. I tried to chase them down but I only ended up falling out of the chair. Laughing and wrestling with Spinner.

"Let's go somewhere," I said to him dreamily. "Let's go somewhere, me and you."

He took me to the van. To _the _van. I don't know why I started taking my clothes off. It wasn't like he'd even asked me to. I jumped on top of him, kissing him fast and hard. I wanted it to happen **fast** and **hard.** I didn't want him to say stop.

From that night on, I never wanted to say stop.


	6. candy coated death

She was drunk. I mean, really drunk. And coked up like crazy.

I mean, I was drunk too, but I was used to being drunk. I was used to being coked up, fucked up, living a perpetual out of body experience. It was bewildering to watch it happen to **Emma**. I'd always thought of her, whenever I did bother to think about her, as a good girl. Good girl, good grades, good reputation. That night in the ravine, you would have sworn she was as raging of a party girl as Amy.

Emma was broken. I could feel it in her. I could feel the **dead** weight of her skin as she leaned her drunk body on mine. I watched her fearlessly suck a bump of coke into her nose. I knew that she had abandoned herself. She walked away, the same way I had walked away weeks before. I knew that she was gone. That we were gone.

Her body was limp and her pussy was tight as we fucked in the back of the van. If she was a virgin, it hardly showed. Her eyes were dead. Fearless. Our hearts racing, veins pumping cocaine. I hadn't expected to sleep with her. I wasn't trying to take advantage of her. But she was drunk. I mean, really drunk. And she dove right in like it was the most natural thing in the world to her. The same way she had pressed the paper tube to the glass and inhaled, there was never a moment of hesitation on her face.

The girl was Thelma _and_ Louise. She kept her foot on the gas pedal. I should have recognized that she was lost, and that someone should have put up red flags. Maybe what happened to Emma is** my fault**. But you see, I was lost too. If we were both headed towards the same cliff, why not go together?

"Are you going to be in trouble?" I asked her as I walked her home. We hadn't slept. We couldn't sleep. We toiled in the ravine for hours and hours while Emma rambled and I pretended to listen. We were strung out now, lost and dazed. The sky was fluorescent purple as the sun slowly inched its way towards the horizon.

Emma only shrugged in response. She rubbed her nostrils. Her eyes were hazy pink. "Don't know," she answered. The ebbing joy in her voice told me she was coming down from the cocaine, thus sobering up and leaning on the cusp of a hangover. "They probably won't even notice."

I felt awkward as she pried open the window to crawl into her basement. Was I supposed to kiss her? Get her number? Say goodbye? I hadn't expected my night to end at dawn, at Emma Nelson's house.

But she spared me that decision as she simply slipped through the window without saying a word.

....

After **that night**, she came to see me every day at the Dot. Not that she hadn't been there almost every day before, but now it was different. Now I had seen her naked. Now I had done drugs with her. Now we had a secret.

She flirted with me while I worked. I could feel the accusing glares of Degrassi students when they watched us. They clicked their tongues and shook their heads, eyeing Emma like she was a traitor. She would stroke my hand, and they winced, shocked that she would dare to touch the untouchable.

I think she liked the way they stared.

It was soon **three weeks** since that **first day** she'd approached me in the alley. I was on break again, on the back steps again, drinking whiskey again. And then there she was again. Creeping down the alley, sullen eyes, tiny apple tits strategically gleaming from her low-cut shirt.

She took the flask from my hands and chugged. She threw it to the ground and started making out with me. I hardly know what to do or say as she yanked on my belt, pulled down my pants and boxers, and rubbed my dick teasingly with her soft hands until I was hard.

"Whoa," I said as I gasped for air between her passionate kisses. "You want to do this _now_?"

She said nothing as she dropped her pink cotton underwear. It dangled awkwardly around her ankles. "Pick me up," she instructed, lifting herself onto me and wrapping her legs around my waist.

I was trembling with intimidation. I told her I didn't have a condom. She said she didn't care.

My erection was stone-rigid as I slid myself inside her, inside wet warm sensual heaven. My blood pumping through the nerves in my dick was electric. She was light as shit, but it still wasn't easy, trying to balance her and fuck her standing up. It was lightyears beyond my realm of sexual experience.

I slammed her back against the cold metal dumpster and propped her head against it. She let out a strained moan and as I pulsed inside her. I was so stunned and aroused it didn't even take three minutes before I came.

Panting, she clutched my head in her hands, kissing me. There was sweat on her face. "We should… get more… of that stuff sometime," she said breathily, in between small kisses. "Wasn't that so fun? When we did it on that stuff?"

"What? Coke?"

I freed myself slowly from her embrace, placing her gently back on her feet. I pulled my pants back up and used my apron to try and wipe some of the cum off her skirt.

She nodded. "I liked it a lot."

"Um, sure," I answered, still dazed by how hot it was to be ambushed like that. "I mean we can try. It's not always easy to find. And it's kind of expensive."

"Well… I'd like it."

She kissed me on the cheek. As she walked away, I pulled out my cell phone and immediately texted Jay. If just thinking about coke got her excited enough to fuck me in an alleyway, I certainly couldn't disappoint the girl.


	7. lined with crystal meth

What I learned on the Monday following my **first night** in the ravine was that even the ugliest, skankiest, least dignified girl in school wasn't willing to associate with me on school property. I guess I was naïve for thinking my incident with Amy meant anything, but I couldn't help getting excited about even the slightest attention from a girl.

In the weeks that followed, Amy ignored me completely when we were at school, unless it was to call me a dork or crack a crude joke. But on Friday nights, it was different. I was her go-to guy, probably because I was the most pathetic. Other guys were tired of Amy's drunk desperation; turned off by her reputation and the nauseating amount of tally marks on the wall of dicks that had been in her mouth.

But I didn't have the luxury to turn her down. I was in no position to be choosy, and Amy's slutty lips around my penis was a sexual thrill I was willing to sink low for. She was friendly with me, made out with me, jerked me off once or twice. I could count on Amy—so long as I provided her with booze or money for drugs. So long as she was fucked up, or had the prospect of getting fucked up.

I tried not to admit to myself what the dynamics of our relationship implied. She was never my girlfriend, or even a friend with benefits. She was my whore, bought and paid for. I'm not proud. But I was desperate back then, in every sense of the word.

Watching Emma each Friday made me that much more eager to embrace the kind of life the ravine had to offer. And naturally, I was always watching Emma. She would keep up with the boys, drink for drink, and then I felt obligated to keep up with her, drink for drink. I was willing to follow Emma all the way **down**.

Emma was like a **queen** in that place. She was beautiful and pure, not like the other girls. She was fresh. She hadn't been ruined yet. Everyone wanted her. They would wait for her to get drunk enough and hope that maybe they'd have a chance. If it weren't for Spinner, god knows whose drunken arms she would have stumbled into. But Spinner kept her close. Everyone was quick to learn that Emma was Spinner's girl.

I was jealous of Spinner. I was jealous of Emma. Their laughter and their roaming hands, the cloud of envy and admiration that followed them everywhere. They were demigods of the forbidden land. Everyone in the ravine wanted to be them. I wanted to feel what they felt.

If you can't beat them, join them. If you can't win, lose with style. I smoked the pot, I drank the drinks, I hit on the sleazy girls. I played the game. Wasted. Obliterated. Being fucked up made things funny at a time in my life when nothing was funny. I was part of the party. I was one of them. It was a sense of belonging I'd never felt before. Nobody cared who I was at school. They only cared how hard I partied and how much money I was willing to throw in for pot and beer. They were **friends**, however artificial, and after everything that had happened recently, I was willing to settle for fake. Fake feel-goods, fake camaraderie, fake Toby. I belonged.

Rick had **died** trying to feel what I felt.

…

It was **six weeks** after my **first night **in the ravine. Getting drunk with people I didn't even care about had become my regular Friday night. Voices were chanting enthusiastically as I held a giant funnel above Amy's little brother's head. I poured a beer into the funnel and watched as it rushed down the tube that connected the funnel to Sticky's mouth. He had nearly finished chugging when Amy walked by and punched him in the stomach. The tube flew out of his mouth, he spat beer in every direction, and the yeasty liquid drench his t-shirt as he bent over, coughing.

"Nailed ya, dork!" Amy cackled.

Sticky scowled as he struggled to regain his breath. "You're a cunt."

"Oh? Kiss your mother with that mouth, _Brandon_?" She shrugged off her little brother and yanked on my arm. "Come on, Tobes, let's go play with the big kids."

We walked towards the fire. Spinner was smoking a cigarette. Jay and Emma were play-fighting, rolling on the grass with gentle drunken smacks.

"Listen, bitches," Amy announced. "We're going to get high. This should be right up your alley, blondie." She winked and pointed sarcastically at Emma.

Emma's eyes sparkled like Christmas lights. I could see the excitement pursed on her lips. "Is it coke?" she asked. Emma was always asking about coke. Every week, every Friday, she was always trying to slide it into conversation. Sometimes it seemed like she made as many friends as she did in the ravine just because she wanted to be the first one to know if _anyone_ could get her coke. I was kind of thankful that she never managed to get some. I was scared of her intensity.

Amy rolled her eyes. "Right, because I have that kind of money. Look, sister, an upper's an upper. Your giddy ass will like this just as much as anything."

Amy took the drugs out of her pocket, a plastic bag of what looked like chunks of milky crystal. She used a tube of lipstick to pound the rocks into powder against her make-up mirror, as I'd watched her do several times before. Her eyes were diligent and alive, crushing the meth into a fine dust. She rolled a dollar bill into a tube and took a hit. She exhaled when she'd finished snorting. Her face glowed as she rubbed the end of her nose.

"Shit yeah," she said with satisfaction. She looked at the rest of the group. "Anyone else?"

"Ice?" Jay asked with his eyebrows cocked. He rolled his eyes. "I think I'll pass. I'm picking up some shifts at the garage this weekend and I don't feel like being twacked out of my mind, thanks."

Amy shrugged. "Okay then, fag, more for me." She looked at Emma and held out the mirror. "Now I know _you're_ up to it."

Emma paused, but I could tell by the look on her face that her hesitation was only for theatrics. She wanted it. She wanted it without a second thought. I could see the **lust** for the danger gleaming from her eyes. She took the mirror and the dollar and hit the ice hard. She took a deep, excited breath when she was finished. I wondered what it felt like.

Amy laughed. "Nice job, **princess**. Now give me some money."

Emma rolled her eyes and handed a few dollars over to Amy. Amy glanced at Spinner. "You?"

Spinner sighed. He didn't look terribly interested, but after staring at Emma's face for a moment, he conceded. After Spinner, everyone's eyes shifted towards me. I was nervous.

"What about you?"

It looked disgusting. It reminded me of the chunky dust that collected in the trays under the chalk boards at school. It conjured up unpleasant memories of cleaning erasers in the third grade.

The idea of putting some mystery dust up my nose made my stomach turn. The fact that _Jay Hogart_ of all people had turned it down seemed, to me, to be a bright red flag. If it's too gross for Jay, it should be seen as unfit for the rest of humanity.

But Emma was staring at me. "You should totally try it, Toby," she said.

How could I say no? If Spinner could do drugs for Emma, then _I_ could do drugs for Emma. There wasn't anything I wouldn't do for Emma. She had to know that by now.

I took the mirror of meth from Amy's hand, and took the step that you can never take back.


	8. how it takes

It was stunningly ironic. It hadn't been so long ago that I tried to stay as far away from Amy as possible; now I found myself clinging to her whenever I could. I had once _hated_ Amy. But now I _loved_ Amy. Amy was the one who made the magic happen. Amy knew how to navigate the world of drugs, the world that was new to me. I learned quickly how drugs redrew the battle lines. Amy and I were on the same team now: Team Get Fucked Up.

"Did she just _smile_ at you?" asked Manny, looking at me with a pair of bewildered brown eyes. We stood on the front steps of Degrassi, in the middle of a swarming mass of students. Everyone's eyes were shining with the excitement of the weekend. Freedom, they thought.

But none of them really knew what **freedom** was. Not like I did.

"Who, Amy?" I said lifelessly, pretending I hadn't seen. I rolled my eyes. "As if."

Manny kept her eyes on me. She'd been watching me carefully lately, trying to put her finger on what was wrong. Manny always knew when something was wrong. She had known me for so long that she could see right through me. Maybe I should have been nervous about that, but it didn't worry me any more. There was nothing left inside of me for her to see.

On that afternoon, it was **nine weeks **that Toby and I had made a routine of going to the ravine on Friday nights; sometimes other nights, too. We usually walked home alone on Friday afternoons. We would play it cool, for the first few steps. We tried to act casual, to make it sound like we weren't **desperate** to get high. We asked each other about school, told boring stories, talked about movies or recent headlines or the weather. We robotically recited all the obligatory bull shit, but deep down all we really wanted to talk about was getting high.

After a few blocks, we couldn't hold it in. We talked about where we would get high. We talked about when we would get high. What we would do when we got high. How much it would cost to get high. How good it felt once we got high. By the time we finally parted ways, we were revved up and chatting wildly about what our Friday night would bring.

I loved getting high. Loved. Getting. High. I felt guilty for how much I loved it. It was all I wanted to talk about, and I knew how pathetic that was. That's why I was glad I had Toby. He listened to me, and I never felt pathetic when he listened to me. He always made me feel like everything I had to say was right. He soothed the guilt. When the weight of it was split in two, it was **easier** to carry. I couldn't admit it then, but we were enablers.

But on that particular afternoon, Manny's Spirit Squad practice had been cancelled. Toby and I were itching as we held our secret under our skin around her. The awkwardness was crushing. It made me want to get high even more, just to escape the guilt of wanting to get high. The walk was mostly quiet.

"See you later, guys," Toby said to us, leaving when we passed his house.

Manny stared at me as we continued walking. I could feel bad things about to happen. "So Em, we should hang out tonight. I feel like we haven't really hung out in forever. You could come over to my house."

There weren't drugs at Manny's house, I thought to myself. "I can't," I said. "I already have plans."

"Mmhmm," Manny replied accusingly. "They wouldn't happen to be plans with _Spinner_, would they?" She had done it. She had cornered me into the confession I wasn't ready to give.

"No, I'm hanging out with Toby." And it was not a lie. Not a total lie. The lying came slowly. I didn't start lying outright until later; until I couldn't even tell the lies from the truth.

"Emma, everyone knows you've been seeing Spinner. You think you can just date the guy I _just_ broke up with and I'm not going to find out?"

"You broke up months ago," I said weakly. "And we're not _dating_ each other. We're just hanging out."

"Emma!" Now that I had actually confessed, she exploded. "Are you crazy? Do you know what he _did_? Why do you think I broke up with him in the first place?"

"Maybe you never bothered getting the other side of the story."

_Maybe you've never known what guilt __feels like when it's eating you alive_, I thought. Manny broke up with Spinner because she couldn't **live** with the guilt of what he'd done. She took the **easy** way out by dumping him. She had the option to toss the burden overboard. But Spinner and I didn't have that option. We could drown it in booze, smother it in the vapors of ice, but it was still there every time we sobered up. It was crushing us.

Manny huffed indignantly. "Why are you doing this to me? To yourself?"

"Are you really worried about me, or are you just mad that I'm dating your ex-boyfriend?" I brought my eyes to hers, lightning glinting between us as we stared at one another.

Manny sighed and looked at the sidewalk. "He's bad news, Emma. He's going to get you hurt."

_Maybe I want to get hurt._

"Whatever," I said. I walked away.


	9. my breath away

Emma loved getting high. Loved. Getting. High. And I loved getting Emma high. We'd be strung out for days, dizzy with lust, alive with passion. We were gods, floating, immortal. Safe inside the insulation of a white-hot haze, life was a joke that never stopped being funny.

We also fucked a lot when we were high.

It became very obvious, very quickly, that Fridays were not enough. We spent more and more time at the ravine, more and more time with people who could get us drugs. Eventually we started spending alot of our time at Amy's house, because her mother was a drunk and always at her boyfriend's. In Amy's run-down apartment, we could do whatever we wanted, without fear of judgment or interruptions. It was our own little sanctuary, our own little family, where we were all focused on the same goal: getting as fucked up as possible.

After **four and a half months** of hanging out with Emma, we had established a routine. Amy's apartment felt more like home than our own. Emma's other friends, friends who didn't do drugs, seemed to fall out the picture. I guess mine would have, too, if I had had any. It was me and Emma, always together, always fucked up, hanging out with Amy, her little brother Sticky, and the string of assorted iceheads that passed through.

Toby was always around, too, which was weird to me. But he had some kind of thing going on with Amy. And he seemed as hard core about meth as Emma did. They took to it quick, I guess because they'd never done other drugs before. I kind of understood. Emma and Toby… neither of them were the same after Rick **died. **Neither was I, I guess.

It was a pretty typical night, that night. Emma was sprawled out on her stomach, staring off in a daze with a fluid smile on her face. I sat beside her, stroking her hair, laughing at all of my racing thoughts. It was like watching cartoons in my head. Colors and noises floated around me like runny eggs. My foot tapped wildly along with the beat of the hip hop music on the stereo.

Amy and Sticky were arguing. Every other word out of their mouths was "fuck" or "dude." Amy gnawed aggressively at the red sucker in her mouth as she bantered feverishly with her little brother. Viscous crimson coated her lips.

"You know what's fucked up?" said Sticky, his voice cracking. His hair was buzzed and green; his skinny arms and gaunt face looked humorous in comparison to the giant black ICP shirt he wore. "What's fucked up, dude, is fucking cigarettes. Like, who do they think they are, telling me I can't buy cigarettes? Are they worried about my _health_? Because that's just fucking retarded. I can go out right now and get some fucking heroin, bam, like no problem. I can get my hands on any fucking shit I want, except _cigarettes._ Cigarettes are the hardest fucking things to buy in the world, if you're underage. Fucking harder to get cigarettes than heroin. What the fuck is that about?"

We laughed.

My fingers couldn't let go of Emma's hair. I wrapped the golden strands around my fingers, and then unwrapped them. Again and again, watching with wonder each time.

I glanced over at Toby. His eyes looked dead, and he was shaking just a little. He didn't look right. There wasn't a lot of color in his face. "I feel like I'm standing outside of my body," he said suddenly, wrapping his arms around himself.

Sticky laughed at him. "Sounds like _somebody_ burned the fuck out."

I cringed. I didn't like the way Toby looked. I didn't like the way the room felt, all of the sudden. I didn't want to think about **burning** out. I didn't want to feel anything but good.

Amy smacked Sticky in the back of the head. "You're a fucking douchebag, Brandon," she said. She tossed the soggy white stick from her sucker to the stained carpet. "We're out of suckers," she added.

I touched Emma's face softly with my hand. "Let's go, babe," I said. "Let's go get some more suckers."

Emma jumped up immediately, wild with excitement. Even the most mundane errands could be adventures when you were all wound up on ice. We wove our fingers together and left the apartment, unable to contain our jitters as we walked the streets.

Time sometimes moved strangely when you were fucked up. I couldn't remember much about the journey, but I found myself standing in the convenience store, staring at the long counter of slushie machines. The array of frozen colors sparkled as they churned in their plastic containers.

"There are eight different colors," I said out loud. I noticed Emma beside me, with a bag of suckers in her hands. "Do you think we could carry eight slushies? I kind of want some of each." I wasn't even hungry; we were never really hungry. But I wanted to _feel_ each of the colors on my tongue. I wanted to just sit them all together in a circle and watch the ice crystals melt.

Emma laughed, and then I laughed, and then we kissed. Those were the golden days. Making out in a convenience store, tweaking under the fluorescent lights, finding joy and life in everything. It didn't seem like anything could go wrong.

But that's because we didn't know what would be waiting for us when we got back to Amy's apartment.


	10. it's like suicide

I sat at my computer, staring lifelessly at the dim glow of the screen. Devoid of enthusiasm, I slammed my thumb repeatedly on the space bar, firing digital missiles at digital aliens. My fingers were shaky and my brain was whirring like a motor that's slowly dying. I hadn't slept in three days. I felt like my veins were pulled taut inside my body. The high had long faded, but I was still unable to turn my body off. I was left to wallow in dim consciousness, fried and unsatisfied.

I hit the high score mark, as I had been playing for hours, but I lost interest. I couldn't focus on anything. I felt itchy. I was thinking about meth again.

I abandoned my computer game and went into the bathroom. I opened the medicine cabinet and perused the array of orange prescription bottles. Dad had muscle relaxers for his back. Kate took klonopin for her anxiety. Ashley took three or four different anti-depressants, I wasn't even really sure.

It was all a fucking joke, really. They tell you drugs are bad, all the time, but in the end it seems like everyone's medicated. All Ashley ever did was cry a lot after Craig cheated on her, and then poof, her therapist put her on pills. What about me? Didn't I deserve something to make the pain go away, too?

I decided there was nothing wrong with **self-medication.**

I twisted open the child-proof lids and took one of each. I carried them back to my bedroom and spilled them onto my school binder: assorted pastel orbs, like Easter eggs, pink and yellow and blue. I used a paperweight to crush them all into a fine powder, and the colors became one shimmering pile of stardust. I cut the pile into lines and snorted all of them.

"I'm going to hang out with Emma," I announced to Dad and Kate as I scurried out the door, rubbing my soft, raw nostrils.

I went to Amy's, where I always went, where we always went to get high. Spinner and Emma were already there, laughing and smiling at each other. I gave Amy some money to buy into whatever she had. I got all of my drugs through Amy. Getting fucked up made me feel tough, sure, but I didn't have the balls to talk to a _real_ drug dealer. I wasn't that desperate. I wasn't that desperate yet, anyway.

We did about half a dozen lines of ice and smoked a ton of pot. I hadn't really thought about how all the drugs I'd taken would mix together. It was about halfway through the second blunt that I started to lose feeling in my feet.

Waves of energy moved into my body, over and over, like the ocean. Everyone's voices started to vibrate and roar, like feedback from a warbled speaker. Streaks of blue lights raced along the ceiling. I was spinning though I was sitting still. Mind and body pulled further and further apart.

"Fucking harder to get cigarettes than heroin. What the fuck is that about?" said Sticky, drawing my attention back to reality for a moment.

The rest of us laughed. He could have said anything and we probably still would have laughed. All things were good, so long as they kept in motion. Ice was perpetual momentum. Once you got used to it, once your blood was accustomed to feeling like sleek silver **bullets**, it was hard to come down. Sober, the world felt like it was underwater. I often felt like I couldn't breathe unless I was high.

I started scratching my arms. Something wasn't right. I felt prickles up and down my skin. Needles. Icicles. Teeth. I felt like my body was a candy wrapper, crumpled up and about to be thrown away. I watched, from above, like I was floating over myself; watched my body shrivel up.

"I feel like I'm standing outside of my body," I said softly, terrified.

Everyone else in the room faded away. I was nowhere. I was nothing. Everything in the room turned to a mural of melting colors. The walls were oozing like paint. Like bright yellow paint.

"They're going to get you," said Rick's voice.

"What?" I cried. I heard my voice echo into an endless tunnel of color. "What's going to get me?"

I could hear Rick's soft, raspy hiss. Ghost-like, ominous. "The bugs," he answered.

With a harsh slap I was inside of my body again; reality flashed in front of my eyes all at once. Amy and Sticky were staring at me.

"You alright, dude?" asked Amy. "You were just rolling around on the carpet and shit, screaming."

Cold sweat coated my face. And that's when I saw them. The bugs. Rick was right. They were everywhere, inside of me, **eating me alive**. Dozens of tiny insects scurried under my skin.

"Holy shit!" I screamed, tearing at my arms with my fingernails. I could feel their prickly legs brushing against my veins and nerve endings. Burrowing into my body. I'd never been so scared in my life. I staggered to the kitchen and found a knife. "Fucking bastards."

Tediously, furiously, urgently, I started stabbing at the little fuckers with the knife. I had to get them out. I could hear Amy's muted squeals as she tried to wrench the knife from my hands. Her interference only made me feel more afraid and erratic. Had _Amy_ put the bugs there? Had she put them in the meth? Was this all a sick game? Why was she trying to stop me from cutting them out of me? Thoughts and paranoia raced through my head as terror-stricken sweat dripped down my face.

"They're eating me!" I screamed, slashing the knife towards Amy to get her off of me. Sticky ran into the kitchen and the two of them, together, tried to stop me from stabbing Amy or slicing open my arms to let out the flesh-eating bugs. Bright red blood began to splatter across the floor.


	11. to look into your eyes

My arms were laden with two plastic bags full of suckers and other chewy candies, and the first thing that I noticed as we walked up the concrete stairs towards Amy's apartment was that the neighbor's dogs were barking. The second thing I noticed was the screaming.

I hurried through the door to see what was wrong, and the terror I felt nearly made me vomit. Toby's arms were bleeding, dripping beads of scarlet all over the kitchen floor. Amy screeched in fear as Toby chased her with a knife, while Sticky tried to get at Toby from behind. Spinner immediately ran into the fray to try and pry the knife from Toby's hands, but I just stood there in dumbstruck horror.

I dropped the grocery bags to the floor, spilling **sparkling** plastic packaging across the stained beige carpet.

"Toby, sit the fuck down," Spinner urged, guiding Toby out of the kitchen and placing him on the couch. He tossed the bloody knife into the sink.

"What the _fuck!_" Sticky exclaimed, shaking his head and scratching furiously through his patches of greasy green hair. "I can't fucking handle this shit. Fucking crazy, yo." He furiously collected the blown-glass pipe and sack of weed that lie on the floor, and retreated to his bedroom to smoke and calm down.

Similarly shaken, Amy retrieved a beer from the fridge and popped it open. She wiped her sweaty brow with a sigh and slammed the first half of the bottle. For someone who'd just been attacked with a kitchen knife, she seemed to be handling it pretty well. Amy seemed to understand the hazards of the game.

"Christ in hell, Tobes," was all she said, leaning against the archway of the kitchen and watching him as he convulsed where he sat.

I realized then that tears were running down my face. Toby's eyes were glazed and distant as he clenched his fists, shaking. He looked like he was calming down, but he was still a complete wreck.

"He's bleeding," I said.

"Ew, and all over my fucking couch," Amy lamented as she chugged her Miller High Life.

"He's _bleeding,_ you guys." In a panic, I scurried into the kitchen to find a towel. I brought one over to Toby and tried to clean up some of his cuts. Some of them were really **deep**. "This isn't good. We have to take him to a hospital or something."

Amy snorted loudly. "Are you out of your fucking mind, Greenpeace? We take him to a hospital and we're all fucked."

Spinner nodded in agreement as he stepped towards me, placing his hands on my shoulders. "She's right, Emma. Don't worry. He'll be okay."

Angrily, I shook Spinner's hands off of me and crawled onto the couch next to Toby. "You guys are pathetic. You would let him just sit here and bleed to death to save your own asses?"

I tied the rag around the wound that looked the worse and went to the kitchen to grab another. Spinner and Amy stood awkwardly in the background, reluctant to take any responsibility. I did what I could to put pressure on Toby's cuts, to stop the bleeding. Color gradually returned to his face, and he looked at his arms, watching the blood dry.

"There was so much blood," Toby murmured. "All over the hallway. And I know they say they power-washed it or whatever, but every day when I walk over that spot where it happened, I swear I can still see the stains."

I nodded, finding myself crying again.

"I want to go home, Emma."

I wiped the salty streams of tears from my cheeks and stood up. "I'll take you."

Spinner bitched and Amy made snide remarks, but I tuned them out as I took Toby's hand in mine and guided him out of the apartment.

We walked back to my house and crawled into the basement through the window. It felt like I never used the door any more. It felt like my whole life was a secret; I existed solely in windows and shadows. I felt like I could close my eyes and just disappear, my body felt that frail and empty.

"Thanks, Emma," Toby said softly as I tucked him into my bed. His voice sounded much more level. "I'm starting to feel a lot better. I don't know what happened to me back there."

I didn't know what had happened, either, and it scared me. So far drugs had only made life ten times better. I hadn't really imagined that they could make _bad_ things happen, however naïve that sounds now. I just really wanted us to stay high forever. I wanted us to be happy again, like we were before the shooting.

Toby eased himself under the covers and started drifting to sleep. Frowning, I slid into the blankets beside him, spooning him gently and resting my cheek on his shoulder. I was too sped up to sleep, so I just laid there for hours, holding Toby and bathing in manic thoughts. I was still fixated on those moments of panic and terror back in Amy's apartment. The blood and the screaming. I had felt my heart stop.

I feel like ever since Rick died, I've been waiting. Waiting for that one shattering moment where everything will change. Where everything will finally end. I'd been standing there, so certain that the gun was about to go off…

I just can't shake the paranoia that the bullet is just biding its time.

…

"Em?" I heard my mother say, far far away. "Emma?"

I looked up from the spoon I'd been staring at, examining my distorted reflection. "What?" I said. "Sorry. I zoned out." Family dinners were particularly difficult these days. I never wanted to eat, I never wanted to sit still for that long, and I definitely never wanted to talk to my parents. What could I possibly have to say to them?

"Honey, you've hardly touched your dinner."

There were excuses or apologies I could have come up with, but I didn't feel like it any more. "May I be excused?" I asked, not bothering to smile.

"Sure, sweetie," said my mom, using a tone that implied even though she was saying yes, what she really meant was _no._ My mom and I used to be so close, such good friends. That made it hard, now, for me to stay away from her without her noticing. "You've been so quiet tonight." Tonight, and every night. "Was everything alright at school? Have you been feeling okay?"

Snake looked up from his plate expectantly, as curious as my mother.

I stared blankly at both of them. "Um, yeah. Things are just normal, you know? Nothing interesting to tell."

"Is there new guy in your life, Emma?" Snake asked with a slight smile, trying to be friendly about it.

For the first time during the entire meal, I made eye contact. "What?"

"Well, I'm not trying to pry, I just notice you going by the Dot after school a lot, and getting dropped off by Spinner Mason pretty often. I've never known you to be friends with him before… I just thought, maybe…" I could see that Snake was starting to blush.

My mother brightened slightly. "Have you been dating someone, Em?"

_Dating_ was an interesting word. I wasn't sure it really applied to me and Spinner. We didn't really go on dates. We just did drugs together and fucked. I held my tongue carefully in my mouth, thinking quickly as my parents gazed at in me in anticipation of my response.

If I told them I was dating Spinner, the downside was that they'd probably ask more questions, and questions were the last things I needed. Especially where Spinner was concerned. On the other hand, the upside would be that a new boyfriend would make a good cover for my recent behavior. No, Mom and Dad, I haven't been acting weird because I'm a raging drug addict. It's just a boy, that's all.

"We've been talking," I answered ambiguously.

"Oh. Well, that sounds nice," Mom said encouragingly, glancing at Snake. Snake forced a smile, but he obviously knew Spinner better than she did. He didn't seem to think it was quite as nice. Mom continued. "Why don't you invite him for dinner sometime this week?"

There was a loud _clang_ as I dropped my spoon onto my plate. Snake watched me curiously. I bit my lip. Dinner? Invite my methhead boyfriend to dinner with my parents? Risk revealing just how pathetic and fucked up my life had become, right in my very own home?

"Sure," I whispered. My mother smiled and nodded.

What the fuck did I have to lose any more, after all?


	12. that's where my secrets lay to die

"What goes up," said Jay, grinning like the jackass he is, "must come down."

I rolled my eyes as I handed him the money I'd earned in tips, and he handed me five white pills in return. They were oxycodone, pain killers, major downers; basically baby-heroin. Emma and I had both been awake for almost five days, and when she told me about the family dinner entrapment, we knew we had to find a way to get some sleep before facing that mess.

I walked back to the car where Emma was waiting in the passenger's seat. Her face was resting on top of her arms, which hung over the edge of the open window as she stared blankly into the side mirror. It was only in moments like that, when I could see her from far away, that I noticed the change in her. I'd always thought she was dangerously skinny, but since we'd been dating she'd practically turned to bones. Her eyes were sunken and her mop of blonde hair seemed suddenly too big for her thin face. She didn't smile as much any more, either.

The air was warm and wet as sugary sunshine gave way to rolling gray clouds. I could feel the tension of the concrete and the grass, waiting in anticipation of the steady-brewing storm overhead. The earth waited desperately for rain the way iceheads waited desperately for either sleep or the next hit.

"Here, babe," I said, feeling the exhausted ache in my teeth that came with just trying to speak. I climbed into the car and put a white pill in Emma's hand. A flicker of light danced across her eyes. She rummaged around the cluttered floorboard of my car and found a half-full bottle of blue Gatorade, which she used to chase the oxycodone. She passed the bottle to me and I took mine, as well.

She looked at me as she buckled her seatbelt, pouting with lips that were nibbled and raw. "I'm tired as fuck," she said.

The energy between us was sour. Emma had been pissed and distant ever since Toby had freaked out **a week** before. The brief look of relief on her face when I handed her the oxycodone was the first time I'd been able to make her **even remotely** happy since that night.

I nodded, put the key in the ignition, and drove us to my house. As I climbed out of the car I felt a cool stream trickle over my arms and legs, unwinding the nerves and muscles that had been pulled tight for days. I glanced over at Emma, whose face had regained its color. The tension between us had already begun to ease by the time we walked through the door, because the drugs had already begun to kick in.

We spooned on the couch and put on a movie, suddenly in love again now that we were high once more. The four o'clock sky was black, pelting bursts of water against all of the windows. The echoing rain made my empty house seem that much more like a protective shell, hiding us from that frightening drugless world outside. I held Emma's thin body in my arms, kissing her head.

"How do I know I'm alive?" Emma asked dreamily. Officially stoned.

"What do you mean?"

Emma stared at the liquid balls of crystal that dripped down the windows. "Sometimes I feel like… like maybe Rick shot me after all, and all of this is really just a dream. Maybe I'm already dead and I don't know it."

Her words scared me, but I didn't have time to answer her. She was deep asleep in the very next moment.

What goes up must come **down**.

…

We'd been sober for three days, ever since we'd taken the oxycodone, so that we wouldn't be twacked out when we tried to sit down for family dinner. It wasn't until those three days of sobriety that I realized, from the moment Emma and I had been dating, we'd always been high when we were together.

"Jesus, Spinner," Emma grumbled, sitting on the edge of my bed with her arms folded. "Could you just like, wear something that _hasn't_ been mildewing in your closet since middle school?"

I sighed. This was the third shirt I'd tried on for Emma's approval before we went to have dinner with her parents. In the past three days she'd been increasingly irritable, and was starting to act more and more like a nagging girlfriend. I wasn't sure how to handle it. Emma and I had never fought before. We were always happy when we were together. Or at least, I'd thought it was happy. Now I was beginning to think that it was something else. A **pretend happy.**

"Well fuck, Emma," I said, taking off my shirt and throwing it to the ground. "Why don't _you_ pick something then? Because I have no idea how you want me to look for your parents. Besides, it's not like Mr. Simpson hasn't known me since grade seven. Who are we kidding?"

No, really, Emma. Who are we kidding? We can only **live** with ourselves when we're too high to know we exist.

"I'm not going to _dress you_," she snapped incredulously, talking to me like I was a child. "Just… fuck it. What do I care?"

Bare-chested, sallow-faced, I took a step closer her to her, pressing my tired eyes on her. "What _do _you care? Do you honestly give a shit about me or what shirt I wear? Why are we even dating?"

Emma's faced soured. "Are we even dating at all? I don't know why I thought this stupid dinner thing would even work, as if my parents would ever buy that you're my real boyfriend. You'll just sit there and tell the same _fucking_ stories that you tell all the _fucking_ time…"

"Fine then! If you're so sick of me, then fuck off!"

Angrily, I marched to my sock drawer and fished out a plastic bag. There was one small rock inside it, just enough to get me high. After three days, that scrap meth was starting to look like ambrosia.

"What are you doing?" Emma asked as she watched me crush up the rock. Her voice was noticeably softer, melting like butter.

I rolled my eyes. "What do you care? It's off. It's over. Why are you still even here?"

It became obvious to me in mere seconds why she was still there. I could see that familiar **twinkle **in her eyes. I could feel her hungry gaze.

"Can I have some?" she asked. She was fucking shameless, sometimes. But we all were. Everyone was. Eventually.

"Don't you have a dinner to get to?"

She sighed. I could hear the fragility in her breath. She sat down beside me on the bed, close to me, magically transitioning from the raging heinous bitch she'd been five seconds ago to the tender, gentle wisp of **angel** she was when she wanted something. "What's the point in going without you?"

She put her hand on my arm, and after fuming for a few more seconds, I gave in. I shared the drugs. We got high together. It only took minutes before we were making out.

"I'm sorry," Emma said breathily, kissing and talking at the same time. "I'm sorry for fighting."

"I'm sorry, too," I replied. I cupped her ass cheeks in my hands, pulling her body to mine. High again. In love again. I'm not sure we could ever tell the difference.

Our passionate kissing was interrupted by Emma's ringing cell phone. She fished it out of her pocket and glanced at the caller ID.

"Shit. It's my mom, she's probably wondering what's taking so long." She bit her lip and looked at me. "Are you still coming with me?"

We were tweaking balls, and she wanted us to have dinner with her parents. Stoned off my ass, I was supposed to convince her parents that I was an upstanding boyfriend. I took her hand.

"Sure, baby."

We went up, we came down, repeat, repeat.


	13. six feet underground

They were bickering again. **A month and a half** after the night I'd flipped out, and the dull murmur of Spinner and Emma verbally picking at one another only grew more and more persistent. Tension hung heavy in the air these days. Amy wasn't too keen on talking to me since I'd gone after her with a knife, so I had to start finding my own ways to get meth. It couldn't have happened at a worse time; everyone was **dry.** The hoops and the phone calls and the over-charging I had to go through were getting tedious. It seemed like we spent more time trying to hunt down ice than actually doing ice, and when we did find some, it wasn't enough. It was never enough. We were running on fumes.

Friday nights at the ravine and playing third wheel to Emma and Spinner suddenly became the last thing I wanted to do. I had only just begun to embrace this new version of myself, Toby the friend, Toby the party guy, Toby the Emma's-almost, and I was already **sick** of it. I hated **faking** my way through conversation, laughing at jokes that weren't funny, listening and waiting for the right moment to finally slide in the issue of drugs. Where are the drugs; that's all I need to know. That's all I came here for.

Tired of the games, tired of the empty faces, tired of Spinner and Emma's bull shit, I started to retreat further and further into my own twisted head. I would spend hours and hours holed up in my room, strung out on meth. Standing by the window, peering through the blinds, so certain in my state of insane paranoia that someone was out there. Someone was watching.

I sketched dragons and stacked sugar cubes. I stayed up all night on my computer. I mumbled to myself and gnawed on lighters. I constantly checked the walls for hidden cameras and bugs. I was losing it.

My only contact with the outside world was to obtain drugs, and I started getting good at it. So good, in fact, that Spinner and Emma wouldn't leave me alone. They were always kissing my ass, calling me at all hours of the night, desperate for me to find them drugs.

Words can't describe the rush of joy I felt at having Emma _need_ me. Seeing her name on my caller ID at three in the morning. I would take Emma all the way to rock bottom, if that's what she wanted.

And it was. That's why she and Spinner were in my room, a place few people besides JT and my immediate family members had been. They were sitting on the bed together while we waited for Tall Shorty to call me back. We waited and waited. The waiting made us anxious. The anxiousness made Spinner and Emma irritable. And so they were bickering. Again.

A harsh knock on the door finally silenced them, and only a second later, Ashley popped in her head.

"Toby, have you been in my room?" she asked in her typical tone of perpetual exasperation. Poor fucking Ashley. Always the victim.

I turned from where I sat at my computer, eyes nearly tearing up from the **burning** glow of the screen. I'd achieved my fifth high score this week. Amazing what you could do when you never slept.

"No," I answered.

She huffed and folded her arms, leaning against the doorframe and peering into my room suspiciously. Emma and Spinner watched her carefully, though she tried to pretend like they weren't there.

"I had twenty dollars on my desk and I can't find it."

I rolled my eyes at her and returned my attention to my computer game. "You act like we're still thirteen or something, Ash. What would I be doing in your room?"

I had played these passive aggressive bull shit games with Ashley before. If she wanted to find out if I took her money, she was going to have to come out and call me a thief to my face. Call me a thief right in front of my friends, who were watching, waiting. She would have to challenge an entire room full of accomplished liars and hungry iceheads. Team Get Fucked Up was a force to be reckoned with.

At last, Ashley sighed in defeat. "Well… if you see a stray twenty lying around, it's mine." She shut the door loudly behind her.

Spinner laughed after she had left. "If I find a stray twenty lying around, I'm getting high," he joked. Only it wasn't a joke. It wasn't funny at all. It was the truth. It was our lives.

Besides, there was no stray money. That money was long gone, sitting in some Lakehurst dealer's pocket.

My phone rang at long last. The sound of all three of us collectively inhaling in anticipation was like the hiss of a firecracker fuse, ready to **explode**. Emma and Spinner watched, holding their breaths, while I spoke to Tall Shorty on the other end of the line.

"Oh?" I responded to Tall Shorty as he explained to me that his guy hadn't come through. I knew Emma and Spinner could hear the disappointment in my voice. They exhaled, crestfallen. No fireworks today. "Right. Yeah, I know how it goes. Well just give me a call if you hear anything. Thanks man."

I hung up the phone and glanced at the couple on my bed. Emma's eyes looked exhausted; I almost thought she would start crying. Spinner punched a pillow.

"Shit's fucked up, man," Spinner said angrily. "He makes us wait for three hours and then he doesn't even have shit."

I could only shrug. The drug world was a perpetual roller coaster. Ups and downs. Haves and have-nots. Highs and lows. Unpredictable and all-consuming.

Emma ran her thin fingers through her hair. "Let's just go to the ravine and hang out," she suggested. Her voice was frail. "Maybe we'll run into someone there who can help us out."

Spinner and I nodded in agreement. Back to the fucking ravine. The source of all evil. The source of all our happiness. Happiness, or something like it.

At the ravine, we got drunk. Emma got loud and pathetic, as she often did when she was drunk, and started shamelessly harassing people for drugs. I sat in an orange plastic lawn chair, staring at the fire, trying not to look at her. I downed the cola and cheap whiskey in my cup, trying not to hear her voice. I hated listening to her desperation. The _want_ in her voice was unnerving. It forced me to face a severe truth.

We had all come to love drugs as much as I had once loved Emma. _More_ than I loved Emma. We clung desperately to the hope of a high the same way I clung to her for years, hoping for even the slightest taste of her happiness.

"Well howdy, crew," called the familiar cackle of Amy. She pranced up to the three of us, grinning smugly. "Long time no see. You all look like shit."

Spinner rolled his eyes. "Thanks, Amy. Always such a sweetheart."

Emma examined Amy carefully. "Are you high right now?" she asked.

Amy shrugged, smiling. "As a matter of fact…"

Our attention was immediately focused on only Amy. Like a pack of hungry wolves, we crept closer to her. "How did you manage to score anything?" I asked her. "This fucking drought has been brutal."

Amy brought the rim of her drink to her coy lips, eyeing all of us with amusement. Amused by our shamelessness. "When the going gets tough, Tobes, the tough suck dick."

Emma furled her brow. "What are you talking about?"

"I know a guy," said Amy, placing her hand on Emma's shoulder. "He's not selling right now, but he'll hook you up if you hook _him_ up, you know?"

"You want Emma to go down on some guy for ice?" I barked incredulously. "Fuck that, that's crazy."

I looked at Spinner and Emma, expecting to see a similar look of disgust on their faces. But they only looked at each other, contemplating. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to punch Spinner in the face. He was willing to let his _girlfriend_ degrade herself just so he could get high?

"Emma, come on," I prodded. "You can't actually be thinking about doing that."

Emma only shrugged her fragile shoulders, looking at me with empty eyes. "I've given head for less," she said softly, trying to smile about it. Trying to turn it into a joke. But it _wasn't_ a joke. This was anything but funny. This was our _lives._

Spinner rubbed his hand on Emma's back comfortingly. Supportively. Go ahead, babe. Put some weirdo's dick in your mouth so we can get high again. It was like their whole relationship was based on drugs. I found myself growing angrier.

"Come on, blondie," Amy said slyly. "I'll introduce you."

"NO!" I yelled. Everyone looked at me, surprised. "Fuck this. This is it. I'm fucking over it. I'm not going to watch this."

I threw my drink into the fire, watching the flames leap into the night sky with the sudden burst of alcohol, and started walking away.


	14. how d'you like me now

Toby didn't speak to me for **three whole weeks**. I didn't really know what he was so mad about. I think it's sweet that he wanted to…. protect my honor, or whatever, but the whole concept seemed kind of futile to me. There was nothing left to protect. Blow job for a bracelet, blow job for some ice. It wasn't that big a deal, really. It was easy to swallow my pride to get drugs because, at that point, I didn't have any.

I probably shouldn't have let Toby walk away that night at the ravine. I should have been paying more attention. I should have realized that Toby was slipping further and further away. He hadn't been the same since the night he went after Amy with a knife. He never would be again. Occasionally, he would talk about Rick speaking to him in dreams, or about the FBI watching his house. Dark, rambling, batshit-crazy kind of talk. Red flags. I should have _known_ that the meth was getting to him. That he was losing it. That I was losing him. I never should have let him walk away.

But in that moment, talking to Amy, Toby was the last thing on my mind. I was consumed, utterly and completely, by the goal of getting high again.

I let Toby go, thinking he would be calling me the next day as usual. Toby always came back to me, after all. But not this time. This time he disappeared. God only knows what crazy shit was going through his mind when he started spending all his time alone. I'll never know now. I was too fucked up to really even notice he was gone.

Once Amy introduced me to her not-so-secret bargaining chip, at least half of the drugs I got hold of were paid for with sex. It was like a front-of-the-line pass. I got more shit, I got the better shit, I got it faster, and I got it more often. All because I was willing to throw in that little something extra. Spinner was so proud.

I never slept. My eyes and ears were always open, waiting vigilantly for that next window of opportunity. The whole time I was high, I would only be thinking about one thing: when would I be able to get high _again_? The end of the high was always looming closer, and I was consumed by the perpetual fear of accidentally sobering up again. Waiting for the bullet to hit.

We were high all the time, and I was sucking dick all the time, and that's how almost a monthwent by.

I sat slumped in a ratty lawn chair, six shades of drunk, watching the familiar glow of that ravine fire. _Who keeps that fire __**burning**__?_ I wondered to myself, barely noticing as the brown glass bottle in my hand slipped lazily out of my weak fingers. Every week I came to this same shithole, and every week there was a fire. Someone must have brought the logs, someone must have kept stoking the embers. Who makes something like the ravine _happen_? It was one of dozens of answerless questions that had been haunting me.

There was a young couple making out next to me, probably niners. I barked drunkenly at them for a few moments and managed to pry them away from each other long enough to bum a cigarette. I held it out, torching the end of it with the roaring fire, and walked away, puffing and grumbling to myself.

Spinner was working that night, and I was broke. I couldn't get high and I couldn't see my boyfriend and the only thing I could do about it was drink at the ravine and pout. I watched, through my bitter haze, the sluts and drug addicts wandering around me. Hating them, hating myself, fucking sick of everything. Wishing I hadn't dropped my beer. Wishing for the sweet, **sparkling** release of ice to wash away the filth this place made me feel.

I slipped on the gravel by one of the picnic tables and fell down fast, faster than my brain could even register. I moaned in pain as I touched my lip, which was bleeding.

"What are you looking at?" I slurred coldly to someone who laughed as they walked past. I could feel my hip start to bruise.

"Emma? Emma, are you okay?"

Gently, I felt familiar hands help me to my feet again. When I was standing, I saw Toby in front of me, though he was barely recognizable. Unwashed hair, bloodshot eyes, cracked dry lips. I never should have let him walk away.

"Oh… Toby…" I said, placing my hands on his shoulders. He had a strange, incessant shakiness about him. It was scary. "How are you? I haven't talked to you in so long."

He sniffled, rubbing his nose, nodding. "I know, I… don't really come here any more. I got this guy at Lakehurst I've been getting most of my stuff from so I just… I just stay at home mostly." He scratched the back of his neck, unable to stop his foot from thumping wildly. I hated seeing him so wrecked. I just wanted to **hold** **him**. "But I couldn't get hold of him tonight so I figured I'd come by here… see if I could score anything."

I nodded. "Oh. I see. Any luck?"

He shook his head. "Nah. Fucking drought." He paused for a moment, breathing fast, looking sad. Remembering all at once why he stopped talking to me in the first place. He thought I was a whore. And maybe he was right. "So how's…. everything else?"

I held my breath for a moment. There was a strange implication in that question. _Everything else_, meaning life outside of drugs. Meaning life was ice, and _everything else_ was just filler. All those **empty**, blurry, mundane things that merely passed the time between highs. Ever so faintly, I could feel the thought sting what little soul I had left. But I knew Toby hadn't meant for it to be insulting. It was as much a reality for him as it was for me. Only in fleeting moments of clarity could we ever question it.

I shrugged, forcing a smile. Pretend normal. **Pretend happy.** "Things are going good, I guess," I answered. "Wish we didn't have school tomorrow. I've got this killer Biology test I haven't studied for."

He nodded thoughtfully, but didn't offer any other response. It was painful and boring to talk about _everything else._

In the corner of my periphery, I spotted Jay. I'd been keeping my eyes peeled for him all night. I knew he couldn't help me find any ice, but lately he'd had a pretty steady supply of oxycodone. At the very least, I figured it would be nice to get some sleep at some point. The good kind of sleep. Drugsleep.

I tried to think of a tactful way to ditch Toby. It only took one glimpse of the possibility of scoring a hit, and already I was over the wave of emotion and nostalgia I had for seeing Toby. "Nice seeing you," I said, shaky deadness in my voice. "But um, I should get going. I told Spinner I would… meet him… you know."

My feet carried me quickly away from Toby, in a bee line towards Jay, my lame excuse tumbling aimlessly out of my lips. Jay usually smiled when he saw me, not because we were real friends or anything, but because he was either wildly amused by me or liked making me feel uncomfortable. When I came into his line of view this time, though, no shift of disposition came to his face. He might have even rolled his eyes.

"What's up, Jay?" I asked, as flirtatiously as possible.

Jay shrugged. "The usual to and fro," he answered. "What do you need?"

I felt it again, another sting in my stomach. There was no reason for niceties with me, and he knew it. He knew it was easiest to get right down to business. He knew I only had one thing on my mind, twenty-four-seven.

I shifted my weight from side to side. "Got any pills?"

He nodded. "Not much, but I got some. Ten each."

"_Ten?_" It would take at least three pills for me to even feel anything. Four would have been ideal. "Kinda steep, don't you think?"

"Times are tough. Even _I've_ been to class once or twice, Em, enough to know that a decrease in supply equals an increase in demand. Increase in demand means I rake in the profits where I can."

Jay Hogart, the economist. I could literally feel my face falling in disappointment. "I've only got twenty on me, but I was kind of hoping to get my hands on four pills."

Jay laughed. Coldly. "Well that's some shitty math then, ain't it?"

I twisted my brittle, thinning hair around my brittle, thinning finger. I pouted my bleeding lips and gave him the biggest puppy-dog eyes I could manage. "I was thinking we could work out a trade."

I moved my tiny hands towards him, touching his warm body. He scoffed and smacked my hand away. "Ah, get over yourself, Emma. That shit won't work on me. I've gotten a lot more from you for a lot less. The 'good girl gone wrong' thing isn't impressing anyone any more, toots. Just _look_ at your drunk ass. You're fucking _bleeding, _Emma. You're just as ho-y as all the other ravine hoes now… You're basically just Amy with smaller tits. Time for you to find a new gimmick. And time for me to find some _real_ customers."

Snickering, he left me alone, clutching my arms around my chest.


	15. I have set my pain at ease

I smoked pot alone when I got off work and watched Family Guy reruns until Emma showed up, around two in the morning, drunk and pounding on my door. She was pissy and incoherent, which wasn't really that big a surprise. Emma was pissy and incoherent a lot these days.

She folded her frail limbs into a ball and sat on my lap on the couch. While she watched cartoons without laughing, I dabbed a wet cloth to clean away the dried blood on her swollen lips.

"I think I fell," she responded with a shrug, when I asked her how she'd fucked up her mouth. "It's not that big a deal, Spin, stop treating me like a baby."

She crawled out of my lap, the sharp angles of her bones stabbing me, and sprawled out on her stomach on the floor. Stretched across the carpet, she rested her chin on her hands and continued watching television. Watching, but not really watching. More and more often I got the feeling that Emma was never really inside her own skin. She was somewhere else, but god knows where. God knows she would never let me in.

I rolled us a fat blunt, feeling a little rejected. Sometimes the only way I knew how to win Emma's attention back when she was being bitchy was to shower her with drugs. She seemed to like me a little better the more fucked up she was. She liked everything better that way.

She took the blunt soundlessly from me each time I passed it her way, never really making eye contact. I could feel her tension ease, though, with every hit. The mood in the room got lighter. Rather than pissy, Emma became simply sullen instead. Her eyelids settled at half-mast over her **dead** eyes.

"Mama Onu was the first turtle in the Palmerston's Atoll to be satellite tracked," she muttered out of nowhere, interrupting my cartoons. She was staring at the carpet, pouting, blazed senseless. "They wanted to study migratory paths. She could swim 2,148 kilometers in fifty-two days. 2,148. I can't believe I remember the exact number."

I pursed my lips several times, attempting to phrase the question, "What the fuck?" in a polite way. Failing that, I just mumbled, "Mmm," and tried not to stare too much. Emma scared me sometimes. I often felt like I was fucking a zombie.

"Blow me a shotgun," she said next, sitting up to pass me the small roach left of the blunt. Obliging, I put the roach between my lips, the red-hot end pointed towards the inside of my mouth. She placed her pale mouth close to mine, and as I blew a hot stream of smoke toward her, she sucked it deep into her lungs. When I had finished, she pulled away, nodding thanks to me as she held the smoke in her lungs for as long as she could.

A cloud of gray smoke danced around her gaunt face when she exhaled at last. She curled up in a ball on the carpet, eyes glued dully to the television. A few minutes later, I heard her muttering things.

"He tried to kill me," I thought I heard her murmur, just before her eyes fluttered shut and she drifted to sleep.

…

I passed out on the couch not long after Emma. I didn't hear her when she left to go to school in the morning, but I did hear her not long after. It was just after eight o'clock when I was unpleasantly awakened by someone banging on the front door. Sleepily, I slid off the couch, still wearing yesterday's clothes, and ambled to the door.

"What's wrong?" I croaked, when I saw Emma standing in the doorway with her arms full of books.

"School was cancelled," she said with a shrug and a bewildered expression. She slipped past me and into the house, throwing her school books onto the living room floor before she flopped onto the couch. "I don't really know what's going on… There were cops everywhere, someone said there was a bomb threat or something. Weird."

Emma gave a slight shudder. I knew exactly what was going through her mind. I could clearly see the image she'd been confronted with: frantic whispers, the air thick with fear, cops with their guns and armor. The same way the school had looked the day Rick shot Jimmy. I closed my eyes and swallowed, shaking the awful memory.

I sat beside her on the couch. "Well, cool," I said awkwardly. "I mean... at least you don't have to go to school."

Emma nodded. "Yeah, I guess so. Don't have to take that stupid Bio test."

I pulled her limp body close to mine. We snuggled on the couch and fell back asleep for a few hours. When we woke, Emma was in slightly better spirits. She used the last of my weed to roll us another blunt, which we smoked, and which prompted Emma to suggest that we make pancakes.

I watched the light sprinkle through the dirty kitchen window and land on Emma's skin as she baked. I sat at the table smoking cigarettes while she did all the work, but Emma didn't seem to mind. She seemed to be having fun, which was a rare sight. We laughed together, stoned and cozy, while the smell of hot golden pancakes filled the air. It was the kind of moment I lived for. For twenty fleeting minutes, we were happy. For twenty minutes I could forget about how shitty things really were. I was naïve enough, in that moment, to think, hey, things aren't so bad. Emma's not so bad. We have each other. We have pancakes. We're going to make it.

It was always those moments, where I was lulled into a false sense of security, that happened just before something really awful came crashing down.

We sat on the couch in front of the news, shoveling pancakes down our throats.

"Spinner, look," Emma said suddenly. Her fork was frozen in mid-air as she gawked at the television. "It's Degrassi."

"Classes were cancelled today when the school received a call warning of the placement of a suitcase in the gymnasium containing an alleged explosive," said the crisp, business-like voice of the news correspondent. We watched the screen, transfixed, eager for more information. "Investigators determined that the suitcase contained nothing dangerous, and after conducting a thorough search of the school, concluded there was no threat present. The prank bomb threat was called in by a student, who police have now taken into custody. As the suspect is a minor, we cannot disclose their name, but police tell us they face three counts of felony terrorism. Classes at Degrassi Community School will resume tomorrow morning."

I heard Emma's chest, heaving heavy breaths beside me. I turned and met her gaze.

"Whoa," I said to her, softly. "Who do you think did it?"

Emma swallowed hard. Her eyes darkened. "I think I have a pretty good idea…"


	16. suddenly

So far I've had to deal with two counselors, my screaming mother, a crying Kate, my livid-beyond-words father, my nervous lawyer, more cops than I've ever seen in my whole life, and even more reporters than I had to deal with after Rick died. Kate's been trying to keep me away from the television, but I know the media is having a field day with this. Toby Isaacs, only friend to Rick the Psycho, facing counts of felony terrorism for a prank gone too far in a furious drug frenzy. Oh, the morbid irony. The stuff of good ratings.

Jail was terrifying, but I was so fucking spun out of my mind that many of the finer points elude me. Dad's lawyer managed to negotiate bail within just a few hours, so for now, at least, I'm home. Home with my stressed and furious family, cops, lawyers, reporters, bull shit, bull shit, bull shit. I'm on hard-core lockdown. No contact with the outside world. No drugs.

It's been two days since I called in the bomb threat. I've been pacing my room, music turned up loud, trying to drown out the nervous chatter of my parents and assorted visitors. The itch is creeping up on me, sobriety clawing at my flesh. Need to get high again. Need to get high again.

But now that I'm sober, I'm starting to see things a little clearer. I'm started to get scared.

It was funny when I thought of it. After I left Emma, after I left the ravine, my friend from Lakehurst called me back. I was so excited to have scored a hit, I cleaned him out. I bought as much as my pockets would allow. And I did all of it as soon as I got home. I got raging, soaring, mind-blowingly twacked. Everything crazy inside of me exploded all at once.

Emma didn't want to go to school, see. Emma didn't want to take her test. So me, tweaking balls, high as a kite, I decided I would give Emma what she wanted. I'd call in a fake bomb threat, and they'd have to cancel school. She'd be so pleased. So impressed. I'd her win her over. I'd make her mine. I could give her what she wanted.

It always comes back to Emma.

Yeah, it seemed like a good idea two days ago. But now reality is glaring at me, and I'm fucking terrified. Not even considering the fact that I'll be owing my parents thousands of dollars in legal fees for the rest of my natural-born life, I'm super-screwed. I'm going to do _time._ I'm going to have to go to court. I'm going to have to go to _jail_. I'm going to be on probation. College? Future jobs? A normal life? Compromised. Ruined.

**Seven months ago**, I never would have seen this coming. I sit here now and I try to put it all together. It's just unreal how quickly it all came tumbling down on me. A party or two became addiction, a stupid prank became a felony. Suddenly, it's not so easy for me to judge and hate Spinner the way I once did. I see now how easy it is to lose control. To watch your actions like you're not even in your own skin, and wake up not realizing who you are or how you got there.


	17. my veins

I don't know why I knew it was him. I guess the first thing that came to my mind when I saw it on the news was, whoever did this had to be out of their fucking mind. And I only knew one person who had recently lost their fucking mind.

"At least you didn't have to take your test, right?" he said with a frail laugh when I went to see him today, about a week after the bomb threat. He looked pale. Shaky. Scared out of his mind.

How could Toby have become this, right under my nose, for months and months, without me ever noticing? If I had thought, after Rick died, that I couldn't possibly hate myself more than I already did… I was wrong.

I can't believe I ever thought I could save the world, when all I seem to do is **ruin** things. Toby did nothing to deserve this awful life, this black hole, this icy abyss. He did the right thing. He was always a good friend. It's **my fault**. I'm the one who killed Rick. I'm the one who turned Toby into a monster. He did nothing but love me, but me, selfish bitch, empty shell, I couldn't love him back.

Rick may as well have shot me, because I don't deserve to live.

Yesterday, I stole one hundred and forty dollars from my mom's purse.

Today, I took fourteen oxycodone.

I drank two beers.

To say the least, I've got a decent buzz going.

I stare down, through the warm water, at the distorted view of my naked body in the bathtub. White flesh against white ceramic. I never want to leave this bath. I never want to see the world again. I just don't know how to live with myself any more. My tears splatter onto the surface of the bathwater as I lay submerged, trying to wash away this filth that never leaves my skin. I'm just so fucking tired of looking at myself. Every day when I glance at the mirror, those **guilty** eyes are staring back at me. I don't want to be **Emma **any more. I've tried, chasing the highs for all these months, and I just can't seem to fit right in my skin any more.

I reach for the razor blade and bring its sharp edge to my wet, raw flesh. As teardrops echo in the bathroom, the razor slices through the skin I hate so much, opening my veins. The speed at which rivers of crimson pour out of me is astonishing. Pure white gives way to harsh red. Blood, the life-force, emptying out of me. There I go. There goes Emma, or what was left of her. The drugs are kind, because I can barely even feel the pain.

There's nothing left to do but wait. I'm just finishing the job Rick should have finished over seven months ago.

Bang.


	18. run dry

Note: Wow. I am so effing sorry this took so long to post. First my laptop died and then my internet was down. But hey, here we are at last. To celebrate the completion of this story which I have so enjoyed writing, I've created a "soundtrack" for _Ice._ Here it is, if you're interested:

1. Black River Killer - Blitzen Trapper

2. Staring at the Sun – TV on the Radio

3. Leslie Ann Levine – The Decembrists

4. Every Person – John Frusciante

5. Criminal – Alexz Johnson

6. Dying Inside – The Cranberries

7. Mailman – Soundgarden

8. The Twist – Metric

9. Two Weeks – Grizzly Bear

10. Come Clean (Acoustic Version) – Hilary Duff*

11. Queen – Tonic

12. - - Pelican**

13. Wednesday's Song – John Frusciante

14. Few & Far Between – Frogpond

15. Glitch – Blind Melon

16. Light After Night – Jakalope

17. Snowflake – Katy Rose

18. Drink Me Dry – Cassie Steele***

* = It really has to be the acoustic version, otherwise the tone doesn't fit… at all.

** = No joke, the title of the song is actually just "-," a hyphen. But it's track 4 from the album, The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw, if that helps you find it.

*** = Not actually a necessary track, if you're not into it. But for me, it adds a little something.

Thanks for reading!

* * *

It didn't end with Rick, or Jimmy, or being expelled, or losing everything. No, it kept getting worse. Just when I thought I'd hit rock bottom, when I thought maybe things would start turning around, Toby got arrested, and Emma killed herself.

It happened so fast. Bam, Toby's prank is plastered all over the news, and bam, a week later, Emma's dead. It's weird, really. I didn't think I had anything left to lose. When you're already running on empty, it's amazing how life can still keep sucking you **dry.**

"Spinner! It's all you, man!" Sticky screams, clutching an ice cold 22-ouncer in one hand and the notorious plastic funnel in the other. The familiar muted chant of deviants and lost souls murmurs around me, the fire blazing in the background.

I've been spending a lot of time at the ravine over the past few weeks. I know it might seem fucked up, that this of all places is the one to comfort me, but it's all I can think to do. Every time I think of Emma… my whole body goes **cold**. I shut down. I freeze. I can't believe she's really gone. I can't believe she wanted out so bad.

The funeral was a haze, black and gray and sober. Manny's sobs echoed loudly in the hollow church, and I could feel her eyes flitting towards me every so often, cold with accusation. Was it me who did this to Emma? Was it **my fault**?

Mr. Simpson approached me afterwards.

"Did she say anything?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper. "I mean… were there any warning signs?"

Warning signs?

**Warning signs?**

Emma was a methhead.

_How do I know if I'm alive?_

Emma never smiled. Emma was depressed. Emma talked about death constantly. Emma had watched someone die and had blamed herself and had never really gotten past the guilt. Emma would fuck guys for drugs and get high every night because she really didn't care about anything, especially not life.

_Maybe I'm already dead and I don't know it._

In retrospect, yeah, I guess there were warning signs. Every time I think about her, I shiver and realize how I never really knew her.

"Hurry up, pussy, beer's getting warm!" Sticky hollers.

"Just hold on a fucking second," I mutter across the crowd. Standing next to me, Amy spreads her lips and her cracked teeth gleam with a bright smile. She passes me the mirror and I hit two hard lines of ice, back to back. She laughs as I rub my nose, marching through the crowd of drunken teenagers to where Sticky is waiting.

"All right," I say, taking the funnel from his hands. "Pour."

The crowd yells, Sticky pours, Amy laughs, and the meth kicks in right as I'm chugging. A beautiful freefall towards a perfect high. Emma would have loved this.

And sure, you might think that's fucked up. You might wonder what I'm doing here, when all this life has ever brought me is more trouble. You'd think losing Emma, losing everything, would make me change my ways. But what else can I do? What would you do, if it were you? What would you do if you'd lost everything? If you were kicked out of school with no friends? If your girlfriend killed herself and your only other companion was in jail? If everything you ever knew slipped away, one by one, and you couldn't even look yourself in the mirror any more?

You'd get fucked up, that's what you'd do.

All. The. Time.


End file.
